1. "I am an 'independent' voter."The more emphasis that is put on this claim the more I know they are further to the Right Wing.

2. "Both sides are messed up."The old 'false equivalency' tactic which used to try and throw off the conversation. This is used more times than not in a fit of exasperation when really falling behind in the discussion. A last ditch attempt.

Americans have been asked for decades to disregard basic arithmetic. Americans have been led to believe that private insurance is more efficient than government insurance, Medicare. Americans have been told that somehow “cost of health care” + “healthcare administration cost” is greater than “cost of health care” + “healthcare administration cost” + “advertising” + “profit.”

*Not JUST let the Bush Tax Cuts expire, but go back to the Pre-Reagan Tax Rates

ALL that and MORE should have been put On-the-Table on DAY ONE.
THEN say to Boehner and the Republicans....
"OK. NOW lets talk compromise."

Those are just a few.
We don't have to get ALL of them,
or ANY of them.
But, as a Party, we DO need to give the American People an IDEA of WHAT the Democratic Party STANDS for.
THAT should be what America is talking about.

Boehner and the Republicans were very successful at putting their vision in front of the American people,
and having THAT as the focus of the national discussion for over 4 weeks.

Does ANYONE here KNOW what the Democratic Vision is?
...besides NOT letting Boehner have every-fucking-thing he asked for?
...besides NOT being quite as bad as the Republicans?

DEAN BAKER: Well, you know, I think this whole debate over big government has always been silly, because it’s not about big government. It’s about who your friends are. And in this case, you know, the friends of the Republicans are defense military contractors, so they don’t want to see them cut. I mean, you know, this whole notion of big government, small government—one side’s for one, one side’s for the other—it’s literally nonsense.

I’ll just give you, you know, one very simple example. We spend somewhere close to $300 billion a year on prescription drugs, because the government gives drug companies patent monopolies. I’d get arrested, you know, if I tried to produce, you know, Pfizer’s drugs. They have a patent monopoly. They get to charge whatever they want. If you didn’t have those monopolies, we’d spend about a 10th as much, somewhere around $30 billion. So that difference is close to $250 billion a year. That’s not entered on the budget, but the government is requiring us to spend extra money for drugs. That’s really big government, but the Republicans never, ever talk about that, because the pharmaceutical industry are big contributors. So we aren't arguing about big government or small government; we’re arguing about who gets the money.

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." - Thomas Jefferson

"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini

"The real truth of the matter - as you and I know - is that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson." FDR

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power." FDR

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations. -- Noam Chomsky